Staff Reporter
Islamabad
Prime Minister Imran Khan said on Tuesday that the Pakistan Stock Exchange attack in Karachi was perpetrated by India in order to destablise Pakistan.
The prime minister was addressing the National Assembly, where he lauded the security forces for thwarting the attack, which could have otherwise caused considerable destruction.
“We have no doubt that India is involved in the attack,” the prime minister told the lower House of the parliament in his speech. “What happened in Mumbai, they wanted to do the same [in Karachi]; they wanted to spread uncertainty. We have no doubt this was done by India,” the premier said.
He praised a police sub-inspector and three security guards who lost their lives while thwarting the attack on the PSX as the “heroes of Pakistan”.
“They gave sacrifices and thwarted a major incident, which was planned by India to destabilise us,” he said, adding that the attackers had a lot of ammunition and they wanted to take hostages.
“My cabinet and its ministers know that all our agencies were on high alert. Our agencies preempted at least four major attempts of terrorism and two of them were around Islamabad. “We were fully prepared … this was a huge win for us,” he said, paying tribute to the security agencies.
At the start of his speech, the prime minister thanked his team for their efforts which led to the budget 2020-21 being approved by the parliament on Monday.
“There was a lot of speculation that a lot could happen … if you had watched TV you would have thought it was our last day,” he said, referring to fears the budget would be unable to be passed.
“I want to thank my government, because Chief Whip Amir Dogar gave me full information [about] what we gained and what improvement we had. I also thank my minorities and the way they participated,” the premier said.
Prime Minister Imran said he and his finance team know “what a difficult budget this was” and the government had to revise its revenue target from Rs5,000 billion to Rs4,900 billion. “We were on our way [and] we had 17 per cent collection but as soon as Covid-19 came, it affected all the economies, so a direct consequence was that our target had to be revised to Rs3,900 billion [and] we had a Rs1 trillion shortfall.”
He said no country, including Pakistan, had been able to measure the impact the coronavirus lockdown would have on the economy.
He said while the opposition was criticising him, people travelling to poor neighbourhoods in cars were being “attacked” by people who were hungry. Imran said the real “confusion” was among the poor people who weren’t sure how they would feed their families during the lockdown. At this point, he lauded his aide on social protection Sania Nishtar and her team for distributing emergency cash among the people, saying there was “no other example of this” in a country with an informal economy.
But he said, “We still have a challenge going forward; we don’t know when our tax collection will gain and how we will help those affected, but it will be a constant challenge on how to sustain the economy.” Invoking Charles Dickens, the prime minister said: “It is ‘the worst of times’, but if we want to make it into the best of times we have to plan.”
